RPI begins staff cuts

Update:Times Union and timesunion.com featured a story and short video about a laid-off RPI employee on Thursday, Dec. 25. READ THE LATEST STORY.

(Information below was previously reported on this blog Dec. 16)

Rensseleaer Polytechnic Institute has begun laying off employees.

Jason Gorss, a spokesman for the college in Troy, confirmed that layoffs occurred today, but declined to say how many positions were cut. He also would not say what job titles were affected.

(The Times Union later learned that RPI told the state Department of Labor it would cut 85 jobs.)

The school released a statement attributed to William Walker, vice president for strategic communications and external relations, calling the cuts “a prudent step to protect the academic enterprise of Rensselaer.”

“The budget actions we have taken will protect our core mission and enable us to carry out the highest priorities of Rensselaer as a leading technological university,” he said.

RPI said it provided “generous severance packages and outplacement services” for the affected workers.

Last week, RPI President Shirley Ann Jackson warned employees of the coming cuts in an e-mail. The school announced a hiring freeze in October, but Jackson said economic conditions had since worsened.

Gorss today estimated that RPI has about 2,000 employees. It is one of Troy’s largest employers.

408 Responses

I was was employed by RPI a number of years ago and found it one of the most challenging places that I’ve ever experienced. By challenging, I mean nearly impossible to get things moving. Too many folks who had been there too long. Although I don’t wish the circumstances of a lay-off on anyone, go “Shirley Ann” for moving out the dead wood … hopefully.

RPI just opened a $200 million+ building (EMPAC) in October. 2 months later layoffs. This is just another example of why RPI cares more about research and faculty than the staff that actually keeps the place running.

I have spent several years working at RPI and have to say it’s just not the same as far as a “fun” place to work. Recall that they have loss three prominent deans in the last year (Engineering, Science, Architecture). All that’s left are the deans of Humanities and the business school and the business school is going in the wrong direction. I know some of those that were laid off today and I have to say they are a huge loss to the institute. These staff decisions were made blindly by the deans who are led just as blindly by their “choice” staff. In time, these decisions will catch up with them and they will fall just as hard.

I have to wonder – what kind of budget cuts were really taken by the president – employees just received in the mail a beautiful, top of the line, non recycled paper holiday card from the president. The postage and the card costs could certainly have been eliminated in this year of “tightening our belts”. It begs the question, if a card was not cut, could other things have been cut to save jobs?

I was one of the lucky, uhhm I mean unlucky people to get laid off today. Here is some inside information that I am all to happy to share, now that there isn’t anything that can be done about it. The actual number of layoffs was somewhere around 120. After speaking to people in the presidents office I have discoverd that the buget cuts were to all departments in travel expenses at a 25% rate, and there were additional cuts, but apparently the president’s budget was not cut but was actually increased, she is also giving her self a raise, her salary will increase by 8% bringing her total compensation over 1.5 million. Lets do a little math, if the average RPI employee makes aprox $35000 and the top execs and members of the Board of Trustees combined make well over $5 million and you just fired 120 people. Hmmmmmmm! the math just isn’t adding up here. I also hear that the president is taking all of the top level execs on a holiday retreat, you heard it here folks. Does this remind you of anyone, “AIG” perhaps? Also don’t forget that the president just had bullet-proof windows installed in her office last week. Ya think she has some enemies now?

I find it quite disgusting that RPI could not find a better way to manage themselves than coming to downsizing. They are a LARGE employer in this area and in these tough times they choose to cut more jobs than find a better way to budget their money. It’s tough enough on families right now and thank you RPI for dealing yet another bad hand.

Mrs. Jackson herself is part of the problem. Think about it, if you really wanted to cut budgets and save money, she and other big wigs in RPI’s “congress” could stand to lose a few dollars and save some people’s jobs rather than cutting entire positions out.

The average staff level employee is not paid handsomely, but by golly if Mrs. Jackson and others chipped in even 10% of their OWN earnings, it singlehandedly would have prevented a reduction. Maybe its a bit anti capitalism, but it would have kept a paycheck in a single parent’s hand.

Apparently, you can’t really run a school like a business, even though Jackson has tried to.

You still have to abide to economic principles, like BUDGETING and not OVERSPENDING. I guess it’s still just a school, no matter how high Shirley’s pay check is. It’s called PROJECTION, and I don’t have to be an engineer to see the writing on the wall. By the way, can anyone understand why EMPAC was a higher priority than hundreds of jobs?

I’m a current Executive MBA student at the Lally School and just heard of the institute lay-offs. Two incredible employees at the Lally School were included. One who ran the day to day student operations of the EMBA program and had over 30 years of work experience and was an absolute gem at that school. Everyone loved her. Then the dean decides to let go the one guy who transformed EMBA, stepped away for a year while the new “assistant dean” took over only to be asked to come back a few months ago to rescue the program, which he did. He is asked to step down after he puts together a class, brings back normalcy, professionalism, warmth and excitement to the program. I’ve had several calls from my fellow students and we all agree the dean got rid of the wrong assistant dean. You ask any staff or faculty in that building what she has accomplished and they will all say in unison “nothing” but she has proven her worth in carrying the deans bags around. I as well as others will not recommend this program to any of our colleagues as long as this administration is leading the way. The dean and his little helpers have got to go.

All organizations strive running as efficiently and effectively as possible. There is absolutely nothing wrong with evaluating the workforce on occasion to “trim the fat”. No sense in keeping a $40k per year secretary, or admin, or janitor on the books if they’re not needed. If they got rid of 50 people who provide little to no service aside from sitting at a desk all day staring out the window and can save $3 million per year in salary and benefits, they have to do that to meet their obligation to do what is best for the school.

They may have rolled this out as “budget cuts” – but that’s not what it really is. All they did was get rid of a bunch of dead weight.

RW, I’ll go out on a limb here. I work there and you are dead on with your assessment. Everyone here is buzzing as to what the dean must be thinking. Both these employees you are talking about are stellar and were always smiling and getting others a lift while getting the job done. It’s obvious this decision came from the other assistant dean who was threatened by him. There’s no doubt in my mind that the EMBA program is in grave danger especially if he will have her running it again. He has continually proven he cannot make good staffing decisions and the faculty have for months now lost confidence in him. He is clueless to this and many here wonder who really is making decisions in that school. He has surrounded himself with staff that are mean, unapproachable, self promoters, and basically have no idea what they are doing. I’m not alone in this thinking and as soon as I find another job, I’m out of here. Things are not good at Lally.

I know someone who was laid off by RPI today. The manner in which RPI chose to let her go was far from “compassionate” (as an RPI spokesperson was quoted in last weeks article as saying) or sensitive. A few weeks ago, Department Heads/Supervisors were asked to provide the Deans/Vice Presidents with a description of each of their employee’s job duties, along with the impact that each person’s job had on that department. This apparently did not weigh heavily on the decisions of the “higher ups”, as the individual that I know that was laid off was ranked as one of the most essential and important employees in her department. This person confided in me that she has worked at RPI for several DECADES, and now she feels she is being “forced into retirement” much earlier than she intended. Does someone with over 30 years of service to RPI deserve this type of treatment? Also, Department Heads/Supervisors of the laid off employees were not given prior knowledge of specifically who was being laid off in their department. Throughout the day, hour after hour, employees, whether they had worked for RPI for 30 to 40 YEARS, or just six months, were called in and told by their Deans/Vice Presidents that they no longer had a job. They were then offered a FAR from “generous” severance package. After the employees were given the upsetting news, they were asked to hand over their keys and employee identifications, pack up their belongings, and leave campus IMMEDIATELY. Work e-mail accounts also became immediately inactive. Some of these employees were escorted out by personnel due to a “suspicion” that they may cause a scene! It is disappointing and highly offensive that an institute such as RPI would treat their employees with such utter disrespect. It’s one thing to have to lay off hard workers, but it’s another thing to treat them like they were being fired. SHAME on you, RPI.

Everything so far that has been said is well known by the faculty, staff and trustees. However the trustees either don’t smell the proverbial coffee or are too afraid to fire President Jackson. Shame on them for tolerating this situation and having a hand in destroying this fine institution. My prediction is that RPI will be bankrupt by the end of this year. Paul ’77

How dare you refer to people with jobs and lives as being the “fat” to trim from a TOP HEAVY “CORPORATION”, that used to be a well respected institute.

If there were truly not a demand for staff level workers, they should not have been hired in the first place. But RPI is notoriously UNDER STAFFED at all times, I know cause I worked there putting myself through college elsewhere. Ask anyone who worked in any department thats not upper management, it’s practically slave labor. The job cuts were witch hunts to fish out the people who have been employed the longest and hold pensions or people who might have children of college age soon, Heaven forbid the child chooses RPI and gets tuition fees waved and Shirley loses an extra 50,000 a year.

The department I worked in was WAY too short on staff and there’s never enough budget for a well deserved pay increase, because upper management, who aren’t even hard working faculty, are soaking in the profits Shirley’s great campaign is drawing in.

Ask yourself, if she’s doing such a wonderful job attracting people to the institute, then where is the money going that should be invested in the people who work and maintain the place? She should not be a president, she’s too greedy and fame hungry. It’s a school, not a world dominating power.

All this is doing is lining Shirley’s and her supporters pockets a bit thicker this winter, and totally destroying the lives of former staff by not giving them the respect and dignity to treat them like humans.

EVERYONE knows how top heavy RPI is, Shirley made it that way, its innefficiently run and just how many vice presidents/deans/what have you does one need in a school? They are the ones who should have taken the “budget” cut, not the staff or faculty who keep the entire place running smoothly, and support the students. What goes around comes around, I hope.

In response to the ever compassionate “trim the fat” – my spouse was providing administrative support to a very large department which is now left with a single admin. Spouse was already doing more than an FTE even working on weekends and holidays and at home. Spouse and family are already devastated by the news and now you have to pile on with your shameful disgusting comments. How dare you.

As a current employee, I can’t say how disheartened I am by this whole situation. All of us on campus have been sitting at our desks since last Thursday afternoon wondering if we will be laid off. Even today, no one who is left knows if the lay offs are done or if security will show up to escort us off the premises. Sometimes lay offs are necessary, but this could have been handled in a much more “compassionate” way, certainly not this close to Christmas. Ultimately, I believe there were other ways for President Jackson to avoid these layoffs and I’m disgusted to continually see the excessive spending that goes on for parties, fundraising, exec. salaries, Lake George retreats, etc. My heart goes out to those whose loyalty and service were rewarded in this heartless manner. I plan to look for other work asap, as I no longer care to be affiliated with an Institution that cares so little for it’s employees and has forgotten its true mission.

A lot of little people have been hurt by the actions of the President of RPI. She has spent money on more and more buildings that are not needed instead of spending in areas that are needed for students and have giving minuscule raises to the staff and support people who are the backbone of the Institute. She spends recklessly (i.e. free food and booze for 3 weeks during the EMPAC gala opening, receptions, full-color glossy flyers for her activities, ) in her goals to make her look like she is accomplishing something and she has done this at the expense of the people she is now laying off. Why doesn’t she give ½ her salary back or get rid of her body guards and her chauffer that drives her around or her housekeeper, get rid of some of her top heavy administration so that some of the staff that she laid off could keep their jobs. If there are staff and support people and departments who are hurt by this layoff, then I think the President of RPI should also feel the pain. Does the Board of Trustees not see what she is doing to the moral of the campus.

Some of the people who were laid off have gone above and beyond their job duties to volunteer at RPI, some of them got the “Pillar” award which is supposed to be a very prestigious award for an RPI employee and then they get the shaft. I think it is time for all RPI employees to rethink giving so much of themselves to an Institute that doesn’t care about them. Let her and her brown nosing staff do it and see how far they get. Some of these people had given RPI their heart and soul for 20+ years. The comment about “trim the fat”, well that is not what was done, a lot of the people who were laid off, were people who were hard workers.

It is a shame that she is treating people this way after all they have done for the Institute especially at this time of year. She send a Christmas card to all employees, well I am sure a lot of them, just threw it in the garbage. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised; because she tells you that you are an at-will employee and if you don’t like it here, leave! So if I was an employee at RPI, I would decide right here and now, that unless Pres. Jackson decides to hurt a little then I would not go above or beyond what my job description states and I would be looking for another job.

She has put more propaganda on the HR site about the layoffs but what it boils down to is her reckless spending of the institute’s money with the blessing of the Board of Trustees. All of this was no unnecessary. I think parents of children who go to RPI should be asking the administration how all this will affect their children. Not that they will get a straight answer, but ask why they can’t get into classes that are required, ask why they have are TA’s teaching classes.

From reading the previous posts it seems like the school handled this very poorly. The school was very generous to me in the past providing a $5,000 grant my senior year for tuition due to my single mother being ill with cancer and unable to help me as much as she had in the past. I think that it is extremely foolish to invest $100s of millions in building new facilities if they can’t keep the campus staffed. I don’t know the particular roles of those that were fired but it seems to me that the school’s finances could be better managed. I work in state government now basically living from paycheck to paycheck, and I see many of the same things in government. Top heavy agencies that pay executives $100K+ while the majority of people that do the actual work are making a third of that. If it’s true that Shirley is pulling $1.5 mil thats shameful. With her salary alone that’s enough to pay 40 employees $37,500 a year (more than I make btw). You can’t honestly make be believe that Ms. Jackson does the work of 30 to 40 employees. Maybe she should practice a little of her economics and make a fiscal prudent decision by hiring a small army to replace her. I find it hard to believe that they can’t find the money for the employees that were pulling their weight. Good Luck everyone.

I can only say as a current & “saved-from-the-slash-&-burn” RPI employee, I wholly/sadly/sickeningly agree with most ALL of these comments.

From the, “Will Shirley fire her butler or her driver or give up the Audi A8?” to the sitting-at-your-desk-wondering-who’s-next that went on for HOURS yesterday…

It’s disheartening.
It’s upsetting.
Morale (in the 4+ years I’ve been with the Institution) has reached an all-time low.
It makes me not even want to go to work.
…and it makes me so truly, truly sad for the employees (and friends!) who were “slashed” in the “burn” that took place.

I like the comment from William Walker, ““The budget actions we have taken will protect our core mission and enable us to carry out the highest priorities of Rensselaer as a leading technological university”. A bunch of words thast mean nothing to anyone and doesn’t help the situation. What is the institute’s core mission? It surely is not to help the support staff. Faculty come and go and do whatever they want. They are treated like gods and the support staff are treated like they are not important to the “core mission” at all. Well, without that support staff, this institute would not survive.

The generous severance package….well you get three months pay and benefits….well that might be great for those highpaying execs who make 100K plus….but for the support staff who probably live from paycheck to paycheck it is a slap in the face for all the time and committement that has been given to the Institute. I guess it was way to make Madam President feel good about what she has done.

Merry Christmas President Jackson, may you get what you deserve this Holiday Season.

None of the events surprise me. When Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson came in with her huge inaugural ball at great expense circa 1998 that was the beginning when staff and faculty said watch out and look at how this individual spends money on herself. I don’t recall the exact salary she drew in 1998, but I guess it was 300K. She got 20-25% raises per year since that time and her RPI salary is now roughly 900K not to mention the boards she serves on that also pay her.

RPI is not a pleasant place to work whatsoever. The constant message is that you are not doing enough and that you are not any good at your job. While faculty bust their backsides to be innovative in the classroom and get resarch grants, they get paltry raises. Shirley takes all the credit and gets a 25% raise. When the faculty raise concerns in a democratic fashion, the Board of Trustees slaps them down.

This is NOT the first “Merry Christmas – in your face” game that RPI has played. The last one came many years ago when Sam Heffner, chair of the board, sent out an angry email message on I believe it was Christmas Eve or possibly Christmas letting the faculty know that the Board of Trustees is in FULL support of Dr Jackson.

Morale will continue to decline, unfortunately. Those at RPI who can save themselves, should do so now. BTW – the benefits given to those who departed were only 12 weeks max of pay – 2 weeks of pay for every year worked to a max of 12 weeks.

And, some of those TAs probably will not be paid because they let go of people who know how to do payroll. They did not train anyone new!!!! SO TYPICAL RPI!!!

Shame on you, Jackson! Shame on you, Board of Trustees! To allow an academic institution to be run like the corporate world. That stupid EMPAC has to be a reason for the layoffs. Wait till that stupid athletic stadium is ready – more rounds of layoffs. Time for you, Jackson, to get rid of the fat you build in your own team. Those high ranking position titles you give to your cronies, VPs. Why do you need a Director of Human Resources when Curtis Powell is the VP? Get rid of Larry. Too many such cronies doing less to no work. They have all become your puppets. This is the talk of the town. Time for you to go. RPI used to be a great place to work till you came and destroy every thing that crosses your path, including the Faculty Senate.

There has been good and bad at RPI. But the recent lay-offs at RPI were indeed uncalled for as there are other cost-cutting measures that could have been implemented. And the faculty would work together to support these measures. It is a shame that efficient and dedicated support staff who consistently received meritorious evaluations were let go on short notice w/o any discussion or consultation with the departments. There was no assessment of the impact or consequences either. Also shocking was the way that these lay-offs were executed. We lost a wonderful colleague who was a key administrative staff here. Employees such as her work hard and deserve better…

I was one of the 100-120 laid off yesterday and I agree with all the comments posted…but what bothers me the most about all this was the cut of jobs that provide day-to-day support for the students…I understand the value in keeping top-notch faculty…blah blah blah, but the office of student life suffered a big hit Tuesday and students are going to suffer as a result because the staff won’t be there when students need them the most! With these tough economic times we’ll see a rise in anxieties & depression and not all students will turn to just the health center for support…they need help from DOSO, the Career Center etc… Who’s going to tell the students and their parents “Sorry, your son/daughter can’t get help right now because we don’t have staff to provide it” Wake up RPI!

These posts are a great example of what RPI has become. President Jackson barely escaped two votes of no confidence in the past couple years. The board of trustees will always be by her side since they are equally inept and weak.

What I want to get at is the Lally school where I have worked for several years as a faculty member. We have several new junior faculty that have started work here and are already looking. The tenure faculty are just as disgusted and are basically waiting out the dean and hope he is gone in the next year. The Lally dean has loss all confidence from his faculty and I see it with the staff too. The moral in this school is the worst I have ever seen and was so even before this economic crisis.

From the very beginning nearly 40 months ago, he has shown that he cannot make staffing decisions. He hires the wrong people, all who seem to be clones of one another, or places existing employees in positions they don’t belong. There are three women in particular who are the main reason for the low moral of this school. Those that work at Lally will know right away whom I’m talking about. How can someone who sold real estate run a department on entrepreneurship. Well she can’t although the dean is oblivious to this. How can a quasi marketing person run admissions for full time MBA programs when she won’t do admissions herself. Then we have an assistant dean who has pretty much by herself transformed the school into a very unpleasant place to work and she has the ear of the dean on all decisions. It amazes us here at Lally how he takes direction from these three incompetent women.

Speaking of which, the two employees that were referenced before who were let go were probably the top employees of this school, in performance, institute knowledge, and likeable. This is the main reason I’m writing in this blog tonight. We (faculty and staff) were stunned by this decision and there’s talk of a petition. You just cannot replace these two employees who ran our executive mba program. All the buzz here is that it’s basically a case of the blind leading the blind. I’m pretty sure one was targeted because they had something on the dean in regards to some unethical practices. All this will come out in time. As to the coming year, you watch our mba and executive mba admissions suffer do to the incompetence staff the dean has put in place for these programs. As my fellow faculty say, we just have to wait him out and hope he leaves soon and takes his threesome with him and hope we have enough students in the classroom next fall. God help us.

I may be late in writing this but I need to say this with all sincerity.

We need to keep the people in mind that are left to do the work of now 2 to 3 people. I was part of the clerical staff at RPI and I know how difficult it was when a phone call came in and how long it would take to SOLVE a problem. Dr. Jackson if you thought your office got a lot of letters of complaints before, you may have to lift the hiring freeze just to answer the complaints you are about to receive from students and parents.

You are not going to get complaints about the work forces because they can only do a 12 hour a day job in 8 hour day.

I pray for my fellow workers that they will be able to survive the harsh job cuts that you and your team put together.

The 41 years that I was dedicated and devoted to RPI has proven to me that no one is safe.